Category Archives for "Managed Services News"

There were many mergers and acquisitions in May and June, but which of the latest M&A news stood out? We’ve answered that question with a dozen deals that made their mark. See the slideshow above.

Despite economic concerns, there were two multibillion-dollar acquisitions in the channel during this period. Once the dust settled on those deals, the critiques came out of their hiding spots. For one of the acquisitions, analysts worry that there may be significant layoffs as a result. This assessment was made based on the acquiring company’s prior deal in which more than 1,000 workers were let go. For the other multibillion-dollar acquisition, one with a smaller price tag, the concern surrounds whether the purchase is a cultural fit in the MSP space.

Speaking of MSPs, we feature one company that has acquired four MSPs in the first half of this year alone. The shopping spree has lead to the company’s geographic expansion in South Florida, among other locales.

Lastly, we report on a deal that creates the largest technology solutions brokerage in the world. Some are alluding it’s a marriage made in heaven.

Also, if you didn’t catch our previous M&A gallery, you can find it here.

There were many mergers and acquisitions in May and June, but which of the latest M&A news stood out? We’ve answered that question with a dozen deals that made their mark. See the slideshow above.

Despite economic concerns, there were two multibillion-dollar acquisitions in the channel during this period. Once the dust settled on those deals, the critiques came out of their hiding spots. For one of the acquisitions, analysts worry that there may be significant layoffs as a result. This assessment was made based on the acquiring company’s prior deal in which more than 1,000 workers were let go. For the other multibillion-dollar acquisition, one with a smaller price tag, the concern surrounds whether the purchase is a cultural fit in the MSP space.

Speaking of MSPs, we feature one company that has acquired four MSPs in the first half of this year alone. The shopping spree has lead to the company’s geographic expansion in South Florida, among other locales.

Lastly, we report on a deal that creates the largest technology solutions brokerage in the world. Some are alluding it’s a marriage made in heaven.

Also, if you didn’t catch our previous M&A gallery, you can find it here.

Welcome to the 2022 MSP 501 Regional Rankings.

Back in June, Channel Futures announced the winners of its annual MSP 501 list. The 2022 MSP 501 was a whole new ballgame. This year’s winners speak to the rapidly evolving IT channel ecosystem and the diversity of business models and specialties our managed-service-provider (MSP) community serves. With our new judgement criteria and methodology, it also speaks to the modern, mature channel.

Now it’s time for the MSP 501 Regional Rankings.

These lists show the top-ranking 501 MSPs in various geographies around the world. Partners based in the U.S. are broken down by individual regions using U.S. Census Bureau designations. We include regional and state rankings. As a result, this helps MSPs see who their biggest competition is in their geography and where they ranked on the 501.

Channel Futures is proud to present the 2022 MSP 501 Regional Rankings. We are starting with North America — the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean. Our international regional rankings will follow.

Click through the gallery above to see today’s second set of featured winners, companies in the Mountain West. This includes Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

Did you miss previous reveals? Click on the links below to see the rankings that were already announced.

The national Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB) says Log4J, which has plagued security professionals globally for several months, will be an “endemic vulnerability” for years to come.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security assembled the CSRB early this year. The board investigates major national cybersecurity incidents in an effort to improve the nation’s cyber resilience.

The CSRB released its first report this week examining events around the disclosure of Log4J last December. The board engaged with nearly 80 organizations and individuals representing software developers, end users, security professionals and companies.

The Java-logging library Apache Log4j can be used by hackers to take over computer servers if it isn’t patched. The library is free, which means companies have to create their own patches for it.

Log4J led to an explosion of attacks.

Log4J Exploitation Trends Difficult to Track

“At the time of writing, the board is not aware of any significant Log4j-based attacks on critical infrastructure systems,” the CSRB said in its report. “Somewhat surprisingly, the board also found that to date, generally speaking, exploitation of Log4j occurred at lower levels than many experts predicted, given the severity of the vulnerability. It has been difficult to arrive at this conclusion. While cybersecurity vendors were able to provide some anecdotal evidence of exploitation, no authoritative source exists to understand exploitation trends across geographies, industries or ecosystems. Many organizations do not even collect information on specific Log4j exploitation, and reporting is still largely voluntary.”

Most importantly, the CSRB said the Log4j event is far from over. Vulnerable instances of Log4j will remain in systems for many years to come, perhaps a decade or longer. Significant risk remains.

Organizations have spent significant resources as they struggled with this problem, the board said.

“For example, one federal cabinet department reported dedicating 33,000 hours to Log4j vulnerability response to protect the department’s own networks,” it said. “These costs, often sustained over many weeks and months, delayed other mission-critical work, including the response to other vulnerabilities.”

Michael Skelton is senior director of security operations at Bugcrowd.

Bugcrowd’s Michael Skelton

“Dealing with Log4J is a marathon, one that will take years more to resolve,” he said. “Java, and Log4j are prevalent everywhere, not only in core projects, but in dependencies that other projects rely on, making detection and mitigation not as simple an exercise as it may be with other vulnerabilities. While the initial wave of Log4J findings has subsided, we do still see Log4J over bug bounty programs somewhat frequently as the crowd dives deeper into the vulnerability, and looks into the dependencies of projects for its presence.”

Complexity of Patching Creates More Difficulties

Matthew Warner is CTO and co-founder of Blumira.

Blumira’s Matthew Warner

“The complexity of patching unknown Log4j systems continues to add more difficulties for organizations,” he said. “A purchased appliance may have a vulnerable version of Log4j without any knowledge of the organization. There continues to be exploitation of Log4j across internet-exposed VMware Horizon servers that have not been patched, even within hours of CISA notifications of vulnerable hosts. In the grand scheme of cybersecurity, however, Log4j is not unprecedented. Even three years after exposure, there continues to be exposed remote desktop protocol (RDP) that is vulnerable to BlueKeep.”

Vulnerabilities that live within infrastructure have longevity and stickiness, Warner said. That’s due to the complexity of networks and IT turnover that results in undocumented devices.

“It will take many years for the industry to remove and update all legacy Log4j solutions and support to identify impacted solutions, and getting this information to organizations will be necessary for privacy/public partnership success,” he said.

N-able is introducing a new RMM tool promises to offer a complete solution for growing MSPs. N-able N-sight RMM makes it easier for MSPs to start quickly and scale efficiently at a competitive price, the company said. It combines N-able’s cloud-based RMM, N-able Take Control for remote support and MSP Manager for professional services automation.

N-able’s Mike Adler

Mike Adler is chief technology officer at N-able.

“MSPs at varying levels of growth need the right tailored solution to meet them where they are versus trying to fit a square peg into a round hole,” Adler said. “That’s why we launched N-sight, to help level the playing field. It’s powerful enough for a seasoned MSP but built specifically for those at the beginning of their growth journey. We’re excited to bring a truly complete solution to them, that delivers everything they need to optimize their business and grow with them as they grow with a price tag that reflects their budget.”

Features

N-sight offers multitenant Windows, Linux and Apple remote monitoring and management capabilities. It comes with a dashboard highlighting critical information during operational peaks. It also offers no-code automation with more than 600 scripts to accelerate scale. In addition, patch management keeps devices compliant and secure, N-able said.

MSPs can also utilize the Take Control, rapid remote control solution with “fast assist.” This helps manage remote desktops quickly, including live chat. Take Control also offers mobile support for full-featured Android and iOS native apps. Finally, it provides sophisticated encryption and multi-factor authentication for secure, instant access, the company said.

N-able says MSP Manager offers automated ticketing and billing workflows that are both efficient and accurate. It unifies and automates service desk workflow, including a mobile technician app. It also provides a brandable customer portal to build customer loyalty.

A Fast Growing Technology Sector

Managed services is one of the fastest growing sectors in technology, at a 20% year-over-year rate. This is according to the Technology Services & Industry Association.

However, it faces three major challenges to growth, retention and profitability. N-able designed N-sight to help MSPs conquer these challenges. It can do so by enabling them to get up and running faster. Moreover, it can easily and profitably manage and secure their small to medium enterprise customers.

Microsoft has chosen the new face of its ecosystem with the naming of Nicole Dezen as chief partner officer (CPO). Nick Parker, president of Microsoft’s industry partner and sales organization on Thursday announced Dezen’s appointment to the new CPO role.

The selection of Dezen (pictured above) comes two months after Microsoft channel chief Rodney Clark unexpectedly left the company after 25 years. Clark, who was only channel chief for a year, left to become chief commercial officer at Johnson Controls.

Clark’s departure resulted in Microsoft rethinking its partner organization and the role of the channel chief. While the official title was corporate VP for channel sales, Microsoft put the channel at the center of its ecosystem. The change in terminology from channel chief to CPO deliberately underscores Microsoft’s “new and deeper approach to channel and ecosystem leadership and advocacy,” Parker stated.

“Her new designation as CPO demonstrates our continued investment in our partner strategy and commitment to the importance of the entire partner ecosystem to Microsoft,” Parker added. “As chief partner officer, Nicole will have singular accountability for the commercial partner business. She will have a tremendous opportunity to lead, innovate and grow our mutual business with partners.”

Consolidated Partner Organization

Microsoft consolidated its strategic partners organization with its industry solutions group under Parker. The move promises to reduce channel conflict and promote Microsoft’s co-sell efforts.

Techaisle’s Anurag Agrawal

“Microsoft needs their partner sellers, industry solutions providers and the enterprise sellers to work together in a much more cohesive manner,” said Anurag Agrawal, principal analyst with Techaisle.

Parker explained the reasoning for the new partner organizational structure. But the title change isn’t just putting a new name on the same organizational structure. Parker said two new leaders will report to her. David Smith will be VP of channel sales, and Julie Sanford takes over as VP of partner GTM, programs and experiences.

“Our mission in the Global Partner Solutions organization is to build and sell Microsoft Cloud applications, services and devices with partners, empowering people and organizations to achieve more,” Parker said. “We will deliver on this with partners across our solution areas and industries to create new customer value.”

Dezen’s Microsoft Tenure

Dezen has held various channel roles at Microsoft for nearly 12 years. After overseeing device and partner sales, Microsoft recently promoted her to corporate VP of partner solutions. Parker said she will retain that role in addition to serving as CPO.

“Nicole brings a unique perspective to our efforts, as well as a complete left-to-right view of the opportunities and challenges facing Microsoft partners around the world,” Parker said.

Dezen announced her promotion on LinkedIn.

“I will be dedicated to doing everything possible to help partners build successful businesses with Microsoft,” Dezen wrote. “Working with them to create differentiated solutions; making it easier, more seamless and more profitable to do business on Microsoft Cloud; unlocking hidden potential through co-selling and strategic partnerships; and evolving how we engage with partners, so they can spend more energy with customers.”

Before Microsoft named Dezen corporate VP of device and partner sales, she was a VP of device partner sales. She previously held various roles in Microsoft’s OEM division before the company promoted her to general manager of that unit. Dezen also spent two years as general manager of consumer and device sales in the U.K. and Ireland.

Agrawal, who knows Dezen, believes she is a good choice.

“Nicole has tremendous experience because she has been selling to the consumer, to the SMB segment, and to the enterprise segment as well, Agrawal said. “And she is very committed to the partner community.”

More News at Next Week’s Inspire Event

Parker and Dezen stated that more information would come at next week’s Microsoft Inspire conference. Microsoft is holding the event online July 19-20. Leading up to the conference, Microsoft finalized some other moves in its partner organization.

Earlier this week, Microsoft announced that Tyler Bryson, corporate VP of global partner systems for the U.S., is taking over its domestic health and public sector industry business.

There were many mergers and acquisitions in May and June, but which of the latest M&A news stood out? We’ve answered that question with a dozen deals that made their mark. See the slideshow above.

Despite economic concerns, there were two multibillion-dollar acquisitions in the channel during this period. Once the dust settled on those deals, the critiques came out of their hiding spots. For one of the acquisitions, analysts worry that there may be significant layoffs as a result. This assessment was made based on the acquiring company’s prior deal in which more than 1,000 workers were let go. For the other multibillion-dollar acquisition, one with a smaller price tag, the concern surrounds whether the purchase is a cultural fit in the MSP space.

Speaking of MSPs, we feature one company that has acquired four MSPs in the first half of this year alone. The shopping spree has lead to the company’s geographic expansion in South Florida, among other locales.

Lastly, we report on a deal that creates the largest technology solutions brokerage in the world. Some are alluding it’s a marriage made in heaven.

Also, if you didn’t catch our previous M&A gallery, you can find it here.

There were many mergers and acquisitions in May and June, but which of the latest M&A news stood out? We’ve answered that question with a dozen deals that made their mark. See the slideshow above.

Despite economic concerns, there were two multibillion-dollar acquisitions in the channel during this period. Once the dust settled on those deals, the critiques came out of their hiding spots. For one of the acquisitions, analysts worry that there may be significant layoffs as a result. This assessment was made based on the acquiring company’s prior deal in which more than 1,000 workers were let go. For the other multibillion-dollar acquisition, one with a smaller price tag, the concern surrounds whether the purchase is a cultural fit in the MSP space.

Speaking of MSPs, we feature one company that has acquired four MSPs in the first half of this year alone. The shopping spree has lead to the company’s geographic expansion in South Florida, among other locales.

Lastly, we report on a deal that creates the largest technology solutions brokerage in the world. Some are alluding it’s a marriage made in heaven.

Also, if you didn’t catch our previous M&A gallery, you can find it here.

U.K. channel powerhouse Computacenter has a new acquisition under its belt. It’s Business IT Source (BITS), “one of the fastest-growing VARs in the U.S.”

BITS employs around 100 people and has its HQ and Integration Center in Buffalo Grove, Illinois. Its reported revenue in 2021 was approximately $245 million, with EBIT of approximately $8.9 million.

The existing BITS leadership team will stay to run the business as a separate operating unit within Computacenter United States to maximise the growth opportunity. The business and the team will fully integrate into Computacenter’s North American operations over time, said the company.

Expansion into U.S.

BITS isn’t Computacenter’s first U.S. acquisition. It first gained a foothold in the U.S. with its 2018 acquisition of FusionStorm. It then landed $1.2 billion-revenue firm Pivot Technology Solutions, which reportedly doubled the size of its U.S. operations.

Computacenter group CEO Mike Norris said its U.S. business continues to grow organically; however, the firm would take additional opportunities to improve its positioning.

Computacenter’s Mike Norris

“BITS gives us a much stronger presence in the Midwest of the United States and brings some great people, customers and leadership to our business,” said Norris.

Norris added that the Buffalo Grove Integration Center will allow Computacenter to serve more of its Midwest regional customers locally over time. It will also help the firm meet its sustainability goals.

“I am confident that the BITS leadership will seize the opportunity to continue their current growth momentum,” he said.

Bob Frauenheim, CEO & co-founder of BITS said he was “excited to become part of the Computacenter family.”

BITS’ Bob Frauenheim

“This gives us the opportunity to provide a much broader range of capabilities to our customers and growth opportunities for our people,” he said. “Operating as a separate business unit will allow us to continue our personalized service while leveraging Computacenter’s capabilities to best serve customers and associates.”

The BITS acquisition will help Hatfield, Hertfordshire-based Computacenter to build on its 2021 revenues of £6.726 billion (US $7.94 billion).

In today’s evolving threat landscape, it’s becoming more and more clear that a unified security approach is essential to a successful security posture. A unified security approach is a scalable platform that helps partners elevate, modernize and expand their security delivery. For MSPs working to help secure their customers’ organizations, building on a unified security platform versus a portfolio of vendors puts them a step ahead. Let’s look at the reasons why this approach makes sense for MSPs, and what key metrics make investing in a USP a win-win for MSPs and their customers.

As for why a unified approach makes sense, we can simply look back at recent breaches caused, at least in part, by complex and disconnected security. This year alone, we’ve seen a number of headline-grabbing attacks that exploited outdated systems and credentials to cause significant disruption. In the case of Colonial Pipeline, a compromised password and a legacy VPN opened the door to an attack that crippled oil delivery for a large portion of the United States. Another example is a school district in Florida that suffered a ransomware attack in which the hackers demanded $40 million to return files dating all the way back to 2012. These organizations, like many midmarket organizations, had a stack of security solutions that failed due to security gaps caused by the complexity of their environment. Unifying security defeats complexity by bringing normally disconnected layers of security together to improve efficacy and reduce the attack surface.

While a more connected security posture is the key benefit of a unified security approach, there are some additional metrics MSPs should consider in evaluating the overall value of a unified security approach. For example, according to a recent Pulse survey, 95% of MSPs believe their team loses productivity and efficiency switching between different product interfaces to manage security for a single client. Streamlining this process into a single platform or console helps remove extra steps and ultimately increases productivity.

This disconnected nature of management solutions also causes loss of visibility and fragmented oversight, which can lead to limited insights and compromised security efficacy across all environments. Unifying security not only improves visibility and insight, it also enables knowledge sharing across normally disparate security layers to improve security posture, reduce time to detection and remediation, and unlock zero-trust approaches.

Another metric to consider when evaluating the use of a unified platform is profitability. By working with a single vendor, an MSP is often able to save money, thanks to fewer fees and other vendor-specific associated costs, lower resources used on training, and so on. They can then pass these savings on to their customers while still maintaining healthy margins.

Scalability is another important factor. With disparate solutions, MSPs often have to force their security technology to fit their business model. Their ability to scale effectively is hindered by solutions that don’t scale equally with the business. A single solution that is capable of scaling at any rate with easy to use, out of the box integrations benefits MSPs, as it promotes rather than hinders growth.

Lastly, training on multiple vendors takes time. With multiple vendors, each time a business adds another solution to their portfolio, IT teams have to learn another product, another vendor’s management strategies, qualify for certifications, etc. A single, unified platform lowers the barriers to entry of adopting new solutions as they can often simply be added on, without additional training or resources.

There are many metrics MSPs should consider when evaluating the benefits of a unified security platform. Looking at factors such as productivity, visibility, profitability, scalability and barriers to entry, it’s clear that MSPs, and their customers, benefit greatly from the adoption of a unified security approach rather than disconnected, disparate solutions.

Mark Romano is senior director of Channel and Field Marketing, WatchGuard.

This guest blog is part of a Channel Futures sponsorship.